


All You're Good For

by mocinno



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Aging, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, Mild Gore, POV Second Person, yes it's in second person no it's not a self insert yes these fics exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21516058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mocinno/pseuds/mocinno
Summary: Byleth, the mercenary, from five to twenty-five.
Relationships: Jeralt Reus Eisner & My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 1
Kudos: 42





	All You're Good For

Your name is Byleth, and at the ripe age of five, you see a man die. Jeralt doesn’t do it on purpose, he hadn’t known you were tucked behind the tree, looking for your father, but it happens nonetheless, his lance swinging down into the man’s throat and a spurt of blood spraying forth.

Your name is Byleth, and six days after the incident, Jeralt tells you the basics of being a mercenary, soon to be the basics of being. Always keep a weapon nearby. Sleep with one eye open. It’s better to be treated fairly than paid well. Never trust a white-haired man in red. Most of all, never have fear.

Your name is Byleth, and when you’re seven, you take your first life. It’s not with malice, but the bandit has shaggy hair and a scratchy voice, and Jeralt’s knife is so close, his words so loud in your ears.

Your name is Byleth, and on your eighth birthday, Jeralt gives you a dagger wrapped in a bow. The rest of the day is spent swinging it around the town square as villagers look onward. It’s an awkward fit in your small palms, but you make do.

Your name is Byleth, and nine gemstones sit in the hilt of your newest blade. After a while, it became customary for Jeralt to simply pass his broken swords to you. This one, he says, plucked from the twitching hand of an enterprising noble, is too bejeweled to be of much use in combat. You agree, and it becomes a wall-hanger in every inn you stay at. At night your fingers run over the craggy surface of the hilt, smooth the edges of the polished gems, curious how many lives stain the steel.

Your name is Byleth, and ten is a small age for your skill level, according to the nice lady tending the most recent inn. She gives you a bowl of warm potatoes and milk as a reward for beating away a mean gaggle of boys harassing her son. You beam with pride as she wipes the milk from your chin. Working for people wasn’t so bad.

Your name is Byleth, and there are eleven orphans at the children’s house. Six girls and five boys make strange noises at your blue hair, your nine-stone sword, the way you can’t say “red” without stuttering. That is if you speak at all. Jeralt pulls you away with the painful smile he always has when you’re around too many people for too long.

Your name is Byleth, and for twelve days you march with Jeralt and his mercenaries. It’s exhausting work, to be constantly walking, keeping watch, helping around the camps set up. There’s always work to be done. The mercenary life is satisfying, however, and it soon becomes something you’ll never tire of.

Your name is Byleth, and thirteen is supposed to be an unlucky number, but it’s the day you officially become a member of Jeralt’s mercenary group, so it can’t be _that_ bad. To commemorate the day he gifts you a new sword. It’s a freshly forged iron blade with a matching leather sheath to boot. It’s too long to swing at your hip like Jerlat’s, so he goes to the leather maker and makes adjustments until the sheath can be wrapped around your chest, the sword hilt poking out from behind your shoulder. 

Your name is Byleth, and fourteen rotting corpses await you in an abandoned shack. Jeralt covers his mouth in horror, his eyes slide to you, but there’s an abyss in your stomach, threatening to swallow you whole. The killer is apprehended, the folds of her clothing decorated with weaponry until three more die, she’s knocked out cold, and your face is splashed with flecks of blood. 

Your name is Byleth, and the feeling of the blood on your face from fifteen days ago has yet to wash away. The maroon stain has long since vanished, scrubbed clean by a tense Jeralt, but the sensation of the liquid still lingers. It’s not a feeling you dislike, not necessarily. Your next mission has double the body count of your last; your sword is so deeply soaked with blood that the iron turns red.

Your name is Byleth, and for the first time, you meet another sixteen-year-old. He’s completely different from you-- dark brown eyes filled with cunning, flashy garments two sizes too big, a sword more decadent than you’ve ever seen at his hip. He speaks with ease, adding to his conversations a dramatic lilt to his voice. His head tilts when you ask how many missions he’s gone on, and you decide that you’re quite happy as a mercenary.

Your name is Byleth, and seventeen is too young to have taken so many lives, so says the one-eyed merchant as he passes food across the counter and you hand him coins in return. He can, he claims, by looking at your sword, see the lives forever stained into the blade. When he asks for the precise number, there are no words to give. He hands you an extra loaf of bread before you can leave and thanks you for your service.

Your name is Byleth, and eighteen feels like a gangly number, too small to be. You’re no longer the youngest member of the group, and some of the new recruits are too strong for their small statures. You have to get stronger. You have to, to ease Jeralt’s worries as the mercenary troop hunts for jobs, struggles with the bandits, their numbers growing by the day.

Your name is Byleth, and for your nineteenth birthday, Jeralt tells you a story. A story about the child of a mercenary, whose life has been stained with blood and tears, death too young and murder to small. The child grows into an adult, swinging a broadsword bravely to the joy of the father. The story ends with an apology to the child. He shows you, at the end of his story, a beaten leather notebook; as he flips through, yellowed and worn pages curl at the edges, and he pushes it back into his satchel with a glowing smile. It will be yours someday.

Your name is Byleth, and in your twentieth year as a mercenary, the green-haired girl in your dreams blinks awake. Her voice echoes in your mind as you meet three scruffy teens with a uniform that makes Jeralt’s eyes bulge; you watch her float nearby until Jeralt scolds you for dozing off. The teens, students, watch you with hawkish eyes as you strike down one bandit after another. They're not fazed by the killing, not by the way their eyes track each swing of your sword, no; their interest lies in _you_ , you realize, after being awkwardly asked to join their armies after the battle. You decline all three, of course. You're a mercenary.

Your name is Byleth, and twenty-one people at the monastery ask you how many people you've killed. The number of people who ask is staggering. Each time your response is the same, a miffed shrug between unawareness and apathy. Yet your reputation grows, as the stone-cold mercenary, as the Ashen Demon without tears, as the silently intimidating new professor. The name professor still feels strange.

Your name is Byleth, and it takes twenty-two weeks of living at the monastery for you to laugh. You can't remember why you started laughing, after the fit of giggles blends into a headache as you laugh, but still, you laugh, Jeralt's eyes wide in awe as you do. How gratifying it feels to laugh. Why, you wonder, did you not do this sooner?

Your name is Byleth, and twenty-three seconds pass between when time flows once more and when the Sword of the Creator whips out. Twenty-three seconds too many, as the redhead's gleaming eyes say, as the bloodied dagger she tosses aside says.

Your name is Byleth, and your initial class of twenty-four has shrank to a measly eight. The others have ran off to their respective houses, an act you can't blame them for. The Battle of Garreg Mach was coming. To be unprepared was to be a fool.

Your name is Byleth, and a girl's sharp voice urges you to wake on your twenty-fifth birthday. You stumble into a hazy blur of light until your senses sharpen and the world comes into full view once more. The villager tries to stop you, puts his hand on your shoulder as he urges you away from the monastery, but you’ve always been one for action and not words, and you rush to the monastery without a sound, heart ablaze.

**Author's Note:**

> I purposely wrote this so it could apply to any Byleth in any house-- imagine away.
> 
> This is pretty experimental, so leave a comment if this sort of format is interesting! Also, plugging my own stuff: "Home, to Her" is in a similar style.


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